Last week, I shared with you the Mission Statement of our diocese, as articulated by our Fourth Diocesan Synod held in 2017.  As a parish in the diocese, and not just any parish, but the Cathedral Parish, I made the case for seeing that mission as our mission as well.  With that I mind, I have decided to include this Mission Statement on the inside cover of our bulletin moving forward.  I would like to spend the next several weeks unpacking this Mission Statement, so that we have some clarity on what we are all about.  If you look to your left in the bulletin (if you are reading the print edition), please re-read the Mission Statement as we begin our reflection today.

Let me start with reflection on the first word: mission.  According to Father John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary, mission is defined as follows: “The term literally denotes ‘sending’ and covers a variety of meanings, all somehow expressing the idea of a going forth from one person to others in order to effect some beneficial change in their favor.”

As I mentioned in my previous article, it makes sense for the mission of our parish to be

in alignment with that of the diocese.  And since the diocese is one part of the larger body of the Church, it is important to ensure that our mission is in alignment with that of the Universal Church.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a good section on the mission of the Church in paragraphs 811-870.  But the Catechism sums up the mission with these words: “The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.” (CCC 850)

Communion with the Blessed Trinity is the purpose of the mission, and everything that the Church teaches and does is in service of that communion.  Through prayer and the sacraments, we draw closer to God, which commits us to a life of charity toward our brothers and sisters.  When he does pastor installations throughout the diocese, Bishop Paprocki always likes to quote the words of Pope St. John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, “On entering the New Millennium.”  The Holy Father wrote: “all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness.” (n. 30)  This is another way of summarizing the mission of the Church, and thus our diocese and our parish.  Everything that we do should, in some way, be set in relation to holiness, which is nothing more than sharing the life of communion with the Trinity.

Mission therefore is not first are foremost about going out and performing works of evangelization and charity, important as those tasks are to the life of the Church.  Our starting point is with God, from whom we draw the grace and strength to then share His love with the world around us, which in turn is at the service of our brothers and sisters seeking to love the Lord more in their lives and to one day become saints.  The mission therefore begins with God and ends with God.  That is a key aspect of mission that we should never forget.

One striking example of this is St. Teresa of Kolkata, better known as Mother Teresa.  The works of charity that she and her sisters have undertaken are heroic in many ways, serving the poorest of the poor.  But she knew that to carry out this demanding work, prayer always had to be their priority.  She demanded that the sisters spent time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament each morning, then receiving Christ in the Eucharist, before going out.  For it was only by spending time looking open Christ in prayer and receiving Him in their hearts that they would then be able to see Christ in His most distressing disguise in the poor.

By our spending time in prayer before the Lord and receiving Him in the Eucharist, we will better be able to see Christ in every person we encounter, hidden as He may seem, and we will be motivated share in the mission of bringing the love of Christ to them so that we may all one day be united together with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Heaven.

Father Alford  

Feast Day: June 23^rd

Our current culture puts a high value on the go-getter’s, self-starters, the self-made-man. Unfortunately, taken to an extreme, this way of operating runs up against the heart of our faith. Just consider Jesus’ words before His Passion: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” [John 15:5] But we could also look to Jesus’ example: He, God, still called men to follow after Him, called them to do the work of building His Kingdom and preaching the Gospel, and He still depends on His Church to continue that work!

But I suspect each of us could learn the same lesson without even reading the Gospel, by just looking into our own lives. Consider the places where you find yourself struggling. Perhaps it is with some project or responsibility. Perhaps it is in your life of prayer, or finding joy in your vocation. Perhaps it is in the face of a cross, a sickness, a burden, a loss. Just notice something that is currently causing you worry or unease, and I suspect that somewhere underneath that struggle is a sense of loneliness. Maybe we chose in some way to “go it alone”, to try and get through some part of our lives without relying on anyone else or without displaying weakness. But often there is no choice on our part to rely on our own effort or abilities, we just find ourselves trying to figure it out – desperate for help, wishing for a guide, hoping someone would come along a notice that we’re struggling … and support seems far away.

St. Joseph Cafasso, born in 1811 in the same village where St. John Bosco would be born a few years later, would become a support and guide not only for Bosco, but for countless others throughout his ministry as a priest. Bl. Pope Pius IX, chose to canonize St. John Vianney and beatify St. Joseph Cafasso together, placing these two priests side-by-side “one, the parish priest of Ars, as small and humble, poor and simple as he was glorious; and the other, a beautiful, great, complex and rich figure of a priest, the educator and formation teacher of priests, Venerable Joseph Cafasso.” It was a ministry of mentoring, of taking others under his wing, supporting and helping them, a beautiful ministry in an age already facing the alone-ness that has become rampant in ours.

Only four months after his ordination as a priest, in 1833, Fr. Cafasso began to work at the Convitto Ecclesiastico di S. Francesco d’Assisi [College-Residence for Clerics of St Francis of Assisi]. There he taught priests how to be spiritual fathers for their flocks. Perhaps they should have learned that in seminary, but the effects of Napoleon’s rampage through Europe a generation before had left those training-grounds for priests with limited faculty and impoverished formation, and now those priests were facing the continued social turmoil and challenges of a changing world as well as a rampant spirit of Jansenism infecting their people, and often themselves. (What is Jansenism? Combine a strong sense of human depravity with double-predestination as well as moral-rigidity and you’re not far from it.) It was a natural response to a world that was already at that time losing sight of God, rejecting the moral principles that had governed society for centuries, and growing worldliness. But the Church is not called to fight human sinfulness with human effort, and Fr. Cafasso knew it from experience.

He would visit the poorest homes he could find, calling the lice crawling over the walls “living silver and moving riches”. He would make his way to the dankest dungeons and work tirelessly to bring condemned prisoners to confession and the final sacraments before they went to the gallows. And, he spent hours every day in prayer, beginning day with Mass at 4:30, and lovingly teaching his weary brother priests a Christlike gentleness from the wisdom of St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Alphonsus Ligouri. “When we hear confessions, our Lord wants us to be loving and compassionate, to be fatherly towards all who come to us, without reference to who they are or what they have done … If we repel anybody, if any soul is lost through our fault, we shall be held to account—their blood will be upon our hands.” He would be a spiritual director for Don Bosco, and many others – guiding, encouraging, mentoring, fathering each of them, fathering the places in their hearts that were desperate for a father – especially those of his brother priests.

The Heavenly Father was very pleased with him!

– Fr. Dominic finds in St. Joseph Cafasso an exemplar of priestly fatherhood. On the one hand, his example challenges me: I want to support and guide people like him! But then I run smack-dab into the places where I still feel so insufficient, where I know I need help myself …  and then I recall his being the first in the chapel in the morning and last there each night. He needed to be fathered too, and turned constantly to his Heavenly Father for that guidance. But also, he went out of his way to ask others to guide him in his own weaknesses, like the saints mentioned above, as well as his own priests and teachers.

When the National Eucharistic Revival was launched, the plan called for three distinct phases:  1. Year of Diocesan Renewal, 2. Year of Parish Renewal,  and 3. Year of Mission.  Having just two weeks ago celebrated Corpus Christi Sunday, we have embarked on this third phase focusing on Mission.  Key events that will kickstart this year will be the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage (currently taking place) and the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis next month.

Although I do not plan to do an entire year-long series on mission, I do want to take some time reflecting on mission as our country focuses on this final phase of the Eucharistic Revival.  The first question that might be asked is:  What is our mission?  Many churches and organizations go through the process of crafting a mission statement to summarize what they are all about as an organization.  The work of preparing this statement can be a fruitful exercise.  Perhaps you may wonder:  Does the Cathedral have a mission statement?  As a matter of fact, we do!  It was not the fruit, however, of a long period of discernment among parishioners and our pastoral council.  Rather, our mission statement has, in a sense, been handed to us, wrapped up as a nice gift.  What I am talking about is the Mission Statement that was decided on as a result of our Fourth Diocesan Synod in 2017.  Here is what the Synod came up with:

The mission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois is to
build a fervent community of intentional and dedicated missionary
disciples of the Risen Lord and steadfast stewards of God’s creation who
seek to become saints. Accordingly, the community of Catholic faithful in
this Diocese is committed to the discipleship and stewardship way of life
as commanded by Christ Our Savior and as revealed by Sacred Scripture
and Tradition. 

(Synod Declaration 1a)

One might read this and think, “That’s the mission statement for the diocese, but what about the Cathedral Parish?”  My response is that it is one and the same.  As a parish in the Diocese of Springfield (incidentally also the mother parish of the diocese) it seems unnecessary to think of our mission as different than what has been given for the entire diocese as our mission.  So I have no problem simply accepting this overarching mission for the diocese as our mission for this parish.  To be sure, how that mission is put into practice will look different in each parish, but I think it is important to be clear on what our starting point is as we move forward.

Therefore, in this Year of Mission, we will be praying about and discerning how the Eucharist will be the “source and summit” of our mission, fueling us with God’s grace to live as His missionary disciples, then returning to the Eucharist each Sunday to give thanks for His many blessings which we offer to Him for the work of building His Kingdom.

As I said, I do not necessarily intend to spend the entire year just on this topic, but it is a theme I would like to give a significant amount of time to in my articles and in our efforts here over the next year.

Now seems to be a fitting time to remind everybody of the invitation that I made a couple of years ago, to pray three Hail Mary’s a day for the following intentions:  the parish, the clergy of the parish, and ourselves individually.  All of us play a role in this mission, so it is good for us to ask Mary’s intercession each day to help all of us in embracing this Year of Mission with faith, hope, and love.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: June 16^th 

About as far south as you can get in France without falling into the Mediterranean, or becoming Spain, is a little town named Fontcouverte. The population only crested 500 souls in the early 2000s, so in large part it looks just as picturesque as it did a few hundred years ago – simple brick homes, their copper-colored tile roofs gleaming as the sun sets, all of it perched on the side of the hill they call “La Vade”, and named after the Fontcalel which flows out from the village.

Probably that little place was as unscathed as one could be amidst the civil war tearing France apart in the late 1500s, but the unity and patriotism and confidence in the monarchy that had swelled in the years after St. Joan of Arc, had been all but shattered now 150 years later by the atrocities committed by Catholics against Protestants and vice versa. It’s true that right as Jean- François was born a truce was finally established as Henry IV secured the throne in 1598 (he, a Protestant, converting to Catholicism in order to do so, then re-establishing Catholicism as the religion of the realm, albeit granting the Huguenots/Protestants religious liberty). Little Jean’s dad had been part of the Catholic League which had fervently fought against King Henry until his conversion, so the family had gained a bit of noble standing from his service in that war. This mean that Jean was blessed with both a rich, and a firmly Catholic, education. He was growing up where many of the Protestants in France had settled, so though the country as a whole was 90% Catholic, his early years were certainly impacted by that disparity of faith all around him, and even if the war was over, the shells of burned churches and stories of murdered priests were not far in his past.

Growing up, he was inspired by the Jesuits who taught in his school, especially the stories of the great Jesuit missionaries like St. Francis Xavier who had died just 50 years before. The age of martyrs, of course, was not over (still isn’t, and never will be as it turns out for anyone who follows a Crucified Savior): Jean de Brébeuf was born just a few years before Jean-François, and Isaac Jogues would be born less than ten years after him, (all of these Jesuits from France). During his decade-plus of formation in the Society of Jesus, our Jean grew rapidly into a tremendous teacher of the faith, besides exemplifying a deep and wholehearted devotion to God as well as a tender heart for the poor and hurting. Surely these were the skills and gifts needed for a world – rapidly expanding – in which so many unknown people had never heard the Gospel. But when he was finally ordained a priest in 1632 his assignment was … to Montpellier, that’d be about 70 miles up the coast from where he was born, and his task … to work with fallen-away Catholics in those areas ravaged by the civil war the century before. 

It wasn’t as glamorous as Francis Xavier, and he wasn’t going to come home mutilated or martyred as would Brébeuf and Jogues and so many others. Nope, he was going to hear confessions before and after his morning Mass, visit the prisons and hospitals in the afternoon, try to get people to come to his formation-conferences in the evenings and try amidst the long days to exude kindness and compassion to widows, orphans, and others who had been neglected, or wounded, by the Church in all those horrible years before. He would endure not foreign jungles or horrendous passages across the ocean, just harsh winters and discouraging turnouts. He just went town to town and preached the Gospel – his words were poetic and moving when preaching at Mass, substantial but simple when he taught the faith on other occasions – and he just traveling ahead of his bishop to try and prepare people to hear from their shepherd and help them return to the sacraments after years far from them. His was the life and work of a pretty typical parish priest of today. 

And then one day, in front of the Church in Saint-Andé (a bit further south than even Fontcouverte), someone asked everyone who they were waiting for, and they said they were waiting for “the saint.” That’d be ‘Saint’ (not yet canonized, not yet dead) John Francis Regis who was coming for another parish mission. His simple words, sacrificial love, and prayerfulness had made an impact after all! And not like 50 years later either! Eight years after being ordained and beginning his circuit around that diocese he had a premonition that he wasn’t going to live much longer. He put his affairs in order, continued to preach about God’s love, and right after Christmas of 1640, he knew he was in his final hours. He spent December 31^st looking on the crucifix and simply prayed “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” before taking his final breath that evening. 

– Fr. Dominic is immensely inspired by this “ordinary” saint. Heroic virtue does not mean martyrdom or baptizing thousands; it mostly means consistent prayer, persevering in charity, and enduring the day’s burdens. All of us can manage that!

Last summer, when I began my series on praying the Mass, I honestly had no idea how long it would last.  I thought perhaps it might take me into the Fall, or possibly the beginning of Advent at the latest.  As it turns out, it pretty much took an entire year to complete the series.  There were, understandably, a few breaks that I needed to take for various reasons, but overall, it was pretty much one article after the next, making our way slowly but surely through the Mass.

I have been very encouraged by the feedback that I have received from many of you on the series.  It demonstrates to me that the Holy Spirit was prompting me to take on this labor or love because it was something needed by the Church.  As you know, many of the most profound insights came from sources other than myself, so I cannot claim any specific credit for anything that may have been moving to you, but I am grateful for the opportunity that the Lord has given to me to have this vehicle for sharing something so important for us as Catholics, which is praying the Mass well.  This time of Eucharistic Revival is far more than just explaining our belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  To be sure, that is important, and I hope many Catholics throughout our country have experienced a renewed appreciation for this important truth of our faith.  But a desire of those responsible for crafting the goals of the Eucharistic Revival was to highlight the treasure of the Sacred Liturgy.  If it is true that the Mass is the “source and summit of the Chistian life”, then a renewal in our love for this gift is essential to the success of this special time for the Church in the United States.

As this series on praying the Mass was nearing completion, I found myself both joyful and a bit nervous.  As I said, this series has been a labor of love, and now that it is done, I am so thankful for the experience.  But then I face the question: “What’s next?”  Is there another series planned?  At this point, that answer is no.  But, I do not want to put limits on what the Holy Spirit may prompt me to do, so do not be surprised if something comes along.  In the mean time, I am content to take these articles one week at a time.  This is where that nervousness comes in!  With a defined series, it was somewhat easy to know what the topic of the next article would be.  Of course, each article required a fair amount of thinking, praying, and researching, but to have a general direction took a lot of pressure off.  Now, I will return to where I’ve been in the past, most likely, praying each week: “Lord, what do you want me to say?”  The Lord always provides, so that brings me comfort, even as I experience a little nervousness.

By the time you read this, I will have just finished attending our annual Priests Retreat with Bishop Paprocki and several other of our diocesan priests.  It was on that retreat last year when I really received the inspiration for this series.  Who knows if the Lord has something in store for me again?  One thing I know for sure about retreat (which is a little strange to think about given that I am writing this before retreat), I will be giving thanks to God for the gift of serving you as Rector of the Cathedral.  On July 1, I will be beginning my 5^th year here, which will officially make it the longest parish assignment I have ever had.  In many ways, these have been some of the most fulfilling and happiest years I have known as a priest, and much of that I credit to your loving support and encouragement of me and my brother priests.  And speaking of my brother priests, I think that is possibly the greatest gift of these past four years that have made for such fulfillment, the gift of priestly fraternity that we have here at the Cathedral Rectory, under the spiritual fatherhood of Bishop Paprocki, who has truly been a father, a brother, and a friend to me and my brother priests.  Please continue to pray for us each day, as we happily do so for you!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: June 9^th 

Legend has it that one of the first High Kings of Ireland was the suitably named Niall of the Nine Hostages. It was his roving bands of pirates who captured a young Padraik and held him hostage for 6 years before his escape, and then return, to bring the Gospel back to the Emerald Isle. One of Naill’s great-great-grandson, a century after the great apostle of Ireland, was Columba. Born into the still-royal family, though now also surrounded by a Christian culture with schools and monasteries to form his early years, he had every comfort his world could offer. 

(I often forget how early that all this happened. St. Patrick was born in England when Britain was still ruled by Rome. When he was bringing the faith to Ireland, the Franks had still not received the Gospel in France and the Council of Chalcedon had still not cemented the Church’s understanding of Christ’s Divine Personhood and divine and human natures. St. Columba, even a century later, 521-597 AD, still lived while St. Benedict was founding his monastery at Monte Cassino, Muhammad was born in Arabia, and Pope St. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to England, which, despite St. Patrick’s coming from there was still predominantly pagan.) 

St. Columba was talented, intelligent, strongly built and a natural leader, but he chose to leave behind the comforts of a regal heritage in Donegal and commit himself to the austerities of the life of a monk. His skills were quickly manifested and he founded monastery after monastery around Ireland, most famously at Derry. They were places of prayer and consecrated life, agriculture and art, study and education, peace and prosperity. Well, until Columba messed it all up.

He had returned to the Abbey at Movilla where he had begun his studies and surreptitiously made a copy of the treasured psalter kept there by Finnian, who had brought it back from Rome, one of the famous translations by St. Jerome. To loop back to St. Patrick for a moment: during his life Jerome’s translation had been completed, but it had yet to reach ubiquity around Europe so sometimes St. Patrick quoted the scriptures from earlier translations. Of course, Finnian was quite proud then to have this bible, and Columba was quite interested in getting a copy of it despite Finnian refusing him that permission. Our gutsy, not yet saintly, Irish monk copied a section every night, and had the whole psalter ready to take with him when he prepared to depart but then the truth came out.

Finnian accused Columba of disobedience. Columba claimed he did nothing wrong in copying the bible. The High King was asked to adjudicate the decision, Diamait mac Cerbaill, the last High King to be inaugurated by pagan ritual, by this time it seems a Christian, and in any case a relative of Columba. Still, in the earliest recorded judgement on copyright infringement, he sided with Finnian. Columba was furious, and the details are muddy, but it seems that in the midst of some sort of contest of strength one of the Northern O’Naill’s (Columba’s side) injured or killed one of the southern O’Naill’s (Daimait’s side, perhaps his son), and fled to Columba’s monastery for protection. Despite the inalienable right of sanctuary, Diamait dragged the man out and killed him. And so began the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, with thousands dead at the end of it, and Columba choosing a self-imposed exile to Scotland to do penance. He would build many monasteries there, became known for his holiness and wisdom, convert the King of the Pict’s to Christianity, and – fitting given what had brought him there in the first place – help to mediate disputes among the warring clans, and continued to transcribe books until his death. 

Oh, and there was one famous time while working to convert King Brude that Columba came upon a group (of still pagan Picts) burying a man who had just been killed by a “water beast” in the River Ness. Columba touched the man, bringing him back to life, but knew the people needed a greater sign of Christ’s power to come to belief. He directed one of his young monks to swim the river. The Brother, Lugne Mocumin, leapt into the water and to the dismay of the crowd immediately attracted the beast. Columba calmly strode to the bank, made the sign of the cross and commanded the monster to stop, which it did instantaneously. 

His Irish temper had, at long last, been yoked to Christ.

Fr. Dominic some months ago heard a podcast by the apologist, and polymath, Jimmy Akin about the Loch Ness monster. Unfortunately, these days, it seems unlikely we have a dinosaur still living there, and though eel DNA is present in large amounts, we don’t have strong evidence for a giant eel living in the loch at the moment. So we don’t know what monster Columba faced that day, but we do know that he converted the Picts, which would be able to assimilate with the southern (already Christian) tribes, uniting Scotland a generation later.

We now come to the Concluding Rites of the Mass, the final elements that bring this great prayer of the Mass to a close.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal does not give much in the way of explanation of this part of the Mass, only the elements that comprise these rites:

To the Concluding Rites belong the following:

• a) brief announcements, should they be necessary;
• b) the Priest’s Greeting and Blessing, which on certain days and occasions is expanded and expressed by the Prayer over the People or another more solemn formula;
• c) the Dismissal of the people by the Deacon or the Priest, so that each may go back to doing good works, praising and blessing God;
• d) the kissing of the altar by the Priest and the Deacon, followed by a profound bow to the altar by the Priest, the Deacon, and the other ministers.  (n. 90)

Although I could say something about each of these items, let me focus on point c), the Dismissal.  There are four options given by the Roman Missal for the Dismissal, and they all begin with the same word: “Go.”  As the GIRM mentions, our going has the character of being sent “to do good works, praising and blessing God.”  Although the Mass in ended, our giving glory to God has not.  My favorite Dismissal option expressed this beautifully: “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  Having encountered God’s word and having been nourished by His Body and Blood, we are equipped to go and live the Gospel in our daily lives.  The Mass is not one hour a week, totally separated from our daily lives.  No, the Mass is integral (necessary) to our lives as Catholics.  Here is how Father Timothy Gallagher, OMV, describes it in his book, A Biblical Way of Praying the Mass: The Eucharistic Wisdom of Venerable Bruno Lanteri:

He sends us, Venerable Bruno writes, as apostles. The word “apostle” means exactly this, “one who is sent.” Venerable Bruno sees in Acts 15:26 the portrait of an apostle: Paul and Barnabas are men “who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are apostles when, in our vocations as husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, in our various professions in the world, and in our life in the Church, we have dedicated our lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When the words “Go forth, the Mass is ended” are proclaimed, we receive the call to exit the church and reenter the world in this way, as apostles. In a very real sense, the end of the Mass is a beginning. 

(p. 86 of Kindle version of book)

This year-long series focusing on trying to pray the Mass better is, very fittingly, also coming to a conclusion.  It has been my great joy to share these reflections with you, reflections which I hope have helped you to enter into this greatest prayer better.  It is my hope that, as we come to the conclusion of these reflections, this will not be an end, but as with the Dismissal at Mass, a beginning.  May it be just the beginning of a journey into a deeper intimacy with Jesus in the most beautiful gift we have as Catholics, the Holy Mass.  If, down the road, we find ourselves losing that fervor for the Mass, falling back into our autopilot ways, not getting much from the Mass, let us take one final piece of advice from our friend, Venerable Bruno Lanteri.  Though these words speak more specifically about our struggles with sin, I think they apply well to our struggles with keeping our hearts focused in prayer at Mass.  He uses his favorite phrase, Nunc coepi, which translated means “Now I begin” or similarly, “Begin again”:

If I should fall, were it even a thousand times, I will not lose courage, I will not be troubled, but I will always say immediately, with peace, Nunc coepi [“Now I Begin.”]  

Father Alford     

Feast Day: June 2^nd 

Emperor Heraclius was in a pickle. He was the emperor of the Byzantine, Eastern, Roman Empire, 610-641 A.D. Constantine, about 300 years before, had declared Constantinople, then called Byzantium, the capital of the entire Roman empire (East and West, which he had reunited after decades of each having their own emperor). In the 600s the empire was again split, so Heraclius was emperor in the East and under attack from Persia. He exhausted his empire trying to repulse that invasion, and then found himself beset by a human tsunami from Arabia. Islam had arisen, and the Byzantine empire was shredded by their attack. Heraclius lost Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Muslim territories were stretching towards Constantinople itself. He needed his people to be unified, but at that time they were anything but. 

The wide variety of peoples under his rule, though in name all Christian, were widely divided in their common faith in Christ. Quick overview: The Church had expended enormous effort in multiple ecumenical councils to clarify what it meant to believe that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Nicaea I, in 325, condemned Arianism and declared that Jesus was “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father” = Jesus is fully God. Constantinople I, in 381, condemned Apollinarianism and declared that Our Lord has a human body and soul = Jesus is fully human. The Council of Ephesus, in 431, condemned Nestorianism and declared that Jesus is one person, with both a divine nature and a human nature = Jesus is not multiple persons. Chalcedon, in 451, condemned the monophysites, and declared that Jesus’ divine and human natures were distinct, but united; not confused or blended together, but also not divided. 

Heraclius’ problem was that he still had Nestorians in Syria and Mesopotamia believing that Jesus was two persons. And he also had Monophysites on the other extreme in Egypt and Armenia who believed that Jesus’ divinity entirely engulfed his humanity. The emperor wanted to come up with some middle-of-the-road doctrine that would bring everybody back together. He proposed something termed “monoenergism” (which argued that Jesus’ divine nature and human nature had a single energy), though eventually he would promulgate a refined version of this called “monophysitism” in 638, which stated that Jesus’ divine nature and human nature had one will. It allowed him to keep the Nestorians happy (who want to keep Jesus humanity and divinity strongly separated), and the Monophysites happy (who wanted to merge Jesus’ natures together).

The leading bishops of the world fell in behind him. They wanted unity just as much as the next guy and the theological problems raised by a Savior Who does not have a human will seemed small in comparison with the Persians and Muslims threatening everybody’s lives. Even Pope Honorius I weakly went along with Heraclius, avoiding conflict and agreeing that his vocabulary wasn’t absolutely a problem, failing to address the devastating theology underneath it.

And then Pope Severinus I was elected Bishop of Rome and refused to sign Heraclius’ statement. His successors, John IV, Theodore I, and then Martin I all held firm against immense pressure from Heraclius and his successors, Constantine III, Heraclonas, and then Constans II. That final emperor simply told the Pope to stop talking about how many wills Christ had. If he was quiet on the issue, all would be well. But Martin I would not back down. He convened a synod in 649 in Rome, and promulgated its canons as an encyclical, utterly rejecting Monothelitism. The gentle Holy Father was arrested, carried in chains to Constantinople, and the Emperor forced the clergy of Rome to elect as his successor Eugene I. (Martin, it should be said, did acquiesce to Eugene’s election so he was not an antipope. That staunch, exiled Bishop of Rome would die shortly thereafter, the final pope to have been martyred)

Constans had his man on the final, and highest, patriarchy of the Christian world, reputedly someone who would finally agree to his watered-down compromised Christology. The newly elected Pope received a letter from the patriarch of Constantinople which he was asked to sign off on. It was vague, obscure, muddying the theological waters just enough that if you squinted it wasn’t all that heretical. The holy, but wavering pontiff read it out before his clergy and laity at St. John Lateran, and the good people of God in Rome stood up before their Holy Father and said they weren’t going to let him leave until he absolutely rejected it. The common folk could smell the heresy mixed into the verbose document better than he, and they would have none of it. Eugene I faced byzantine delegates and sent them packing. They threatened to roast him alive just as soon as the emperor had things under control back home, though he was saved from this fate by the invasion of Crete by the Muslim armies. He was saved from a worse fate by those good, faithful people of Rome.

Fr. Dominic has found his faith strengthened countless times by good and staunch families and brother priests. Sometimes it is the devotion of someone while receiving Holy Communion that reaffirms my faith in the Eucharist, or when priest-friends have simply reminded me of Christ’s strength when I am trying to go through life under my own effort.

Having taken some time for quiet prayer, after receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, the liturgy brings the Communion Rite to a conclusion with the Prayer after Communion.  This prayer, similar to that of the Opening Collect, though brief in nature, can be a profound prayer to express in words what we desire in our hearts, having just welcomed the Lord anew into ourselves.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal describes this prayer in this way:

To bring to completion the prayer of the People of God, and also to conclude the whole Communion Rite, the Priest pronounces the Prayer after Communion, in which he prays for the fruits of the mystery just celebrated. (n. 89)

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this prayer is to look at a couple of examples, the first of which I will take from next Sunday’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi.  Here are the words the Church gives us to conclude our prayer on that solemnity, words which I think summarize what we desire every time we receive Holy Communion:

Grant, O Lord, we pray,
that we may delight for all eternity
in that share in your divine life,
which is foreshadowed in the present age
by our reception of your precious Body and Blood.
Who live and reign for ever and ever.

Another example that I find particularly beautiful, and which highlights how this sacrament of charity commits us to greater love of God and neighbor, comes from the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which will be celebrated the Friday after Corpus Christi.  Here are the words of that prayer:

May this sacrament of charity, O Lord,
make us fervent with the fire of holy love,
so that, drawn always to your Son,
we may learn to see him in our neighbor.
Through Christ our Lord.

In last week’s bulletin article, I encouraged the importance of taking time for silent prayer after receiving the Eucharist.  I provided some examples, but I can also suggest that this Prayer after Communion can also be something we pray personally, before praying it communally, such that having reflected on the words briefly in silence, they will be all the more fruitful when we hear them proclaimed by the celebrant as we bring the Communion Rite to a close.

How beautiful indeed are these prayers that our Mother, the Church gives to us to pray during the Mass!  I want to repeat something I wrote about the Opening Collect, words which I think apply equally as well to the Prayer after Communion.  “In addition to praying with the readings of the Mass as a good way to prepare for Mass, praying with the Prayer after Communion can also be very fruitful, so do not overlook these gems that the Church offers to us as sources of rich reflection and meditation.”

Father Alford     

Bl. Juliana of Liège

First stop: Bolsena, Italy, 1253 AD. A German priest, Peter of Prague, was on his way to Rome. He was almost there, just 60 miles away, and had stopped in that little town to celebrate Mass at a small church dedicated to the martyr St. Christina. The fact was he was on pilgrimage to Rome because he was struggling to believe that the bread and wine became Jesus’ Body and Blood when he spoke the words of consecration. 

It was only a few decades before that the Fourth Lateran Council – among a whole lot of other things – had formally used the word “transubstantiation” to describe the change that happened to the bread and wine at Mass. Of course, even the simplest Christian and dozens of the greatest bishops and fathers of the Church from the earliest days of the Church had believed that when Jesus said “this is my Body”, and when the priest said it, it was true, it happened. But that radical truth is not easy to understand, and so a smattering of theologians over the centuries had tried to rationalize it away, leading to the aforementioned clarification from Lateran IV. In any case, Fr. Peter was no theologian, nor heretic, but as he prayed those perennial words “hoc est enim Corpus Meum” [“this is My Body”], his heart still questioned. 

And then the host began to bleed.

Second stop: Orvieto, Italy, April 27^th, 2015 AD. The bishop of Orvieto, a small city a dozen miles west of Bolsena, was finally receiving the results from a project that experts had been conducting during that entire season of Lent. You see, when Fr. Peter had found his Mass interrupted by the very visible presence of Jesus’ Body and Blood, he had done the sensible thing and humbly gone to the bishop in Orvieto to confess his doubt, and ask what ought to be done with the blood that he dripped from his trembling hands upon the altar and corporal. The bishop, with Pope Urban IV tagging along since he was actually living there at the time, hastened to see the miracle for themselves, and brought it back in great solemnity to the bigger city. Within a year Urban IV would be the first Pope to instate a universal feast day for Holy Roman Church, enlisting St. Thomas Aquinas, to formulate prayers for the Mass and Office of that day, with Tantum Ergo spilling from choir lofts and congregations ever since.

Fast forward 800 years, and Ester Giovacchini, an expert in conservative restoration and ancient fabrics, was concluding her presentation to the modern Bishop of Orvieto, with the results of her microscopic examination of that same corporal. Like his predecessor, his own faith was rekindled. It is not wine stains that spot the ancient square of linen, but plasma and serum of human blood dating back to when Fr. Peter’s shaking hands held that bleeding host. 

But the feast of Corpus Christi predated Lateran IV’s First Canon, Urban IV’s “Transiturus de hoc mundo”, Thomas Aquinas’s “Pange Lingua”, or Peter of Prague’s doubt.

Third stop: Liège, Belgium, 1198 AD. A little girl, Juliana, was orphaned when both her parents died, and so ended up with her sister being raised at the Norbertine convent of Mont-Cornillon. The quiet, bookish, girl loved to read the theology of Augustine and Bernard, but also to care for the sick and lepers – hers was a deep faith, combined with a deep charity. As a young lay woman, she began having visions of the moon, marred by a dark spot, as she prayed to Jesus about its meaning, she came to know that the Church needed to better celebrate the gift of the Blessed Sacrament. Turmoil was all around. In Juliana’s life, a corrupt priest ran her out of town the simple dwelling of a nearby anchoress. But it was that pious woman who convinced Juliana to share her hope with the bishop, to help draft a set of prayers and hymns for such a feast, all of which was also shared with the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon. 

He went to the Council of Leon I some decades later, impressed Pope Innocent IV, was sent to negotiate various big and important situations in Germany, Jerusalem, and France. And then was elected Pope Urban IV, who found himself on one important afternoon staying with the Bishop of Orvieto.

When St. Thomas Aquinas finished his office for the great feast of Corpus Christi, the first antiphon of vespers for the evening before Corpus Christi – the very first line to be chanted around by every priest and nun and layperson around the Christian world – was not written by the great Dominican. He knew he could do no better than what had been already penned by a little-known pious lay-woman up in Belgium:

Animarum cibus Dei | Food for souls
sapientia nobis | the wisdom of God has offered to us
carnem assumptam proposuit in edulium | for the flesh that He has assumed
ut per cibum humanitatis | so that through the food of humanity
invitaret ad gustum divinitatis | He may invite us to taste of divinity.

– Fr. Dominic can resonate with Peter of Prague. How is it that God would love us so much to become food we can eat … would love me so much as to enter the world in my hands?! Perhaps rather than questioning, we would better to emulate Juliana and simply smile when His Love surpasses our mind’s capacity to understand, and our heart’s capacity to love.